ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses recent developments in biomedical science. It seeks to understand the reasons for neoliberals' interest in genomics, and the ends to their activities are directed. The chapter finds an answer in neoliberal epistemology: genomics may facilitate the unobstructed operation of the marketplace of ideas. Neoliberalism is a politico-intellectual project, first devised as a response to socialism, social welfare liberalism, and–importantly–classical liberalism. For neoliberals, science may participate in generating knowledge only so long as it is organized correctly and its results are used in the right way. The diminution of the academic journal's status follows a favorite neoliberal complaint, that the pace of academic science is far too slow. Those who propose to lean on the knowledge of the scientific community, by calling for more information about drugs to inform a regulatory decision, find themselves accused of foreclosing use of the marketplace of ideas, the only method available of arriving at true knowledge about drugs.
